


1000 years ain’t got nothin’ on us babe

by VerdantMoth



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (Ish) - Freeform, Amnesia, But Honestly He has his Heart In the Right Place, Canon-Typical Violence, Lost Memories, M/M, Minor IronSpider, Multiple Lives, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Steve is a Manipulative Shit, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 20:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20180320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: He doodles, lazy and precise. Not the paintings, not the hall of heroes. He makes portraits of the viewers.Later, he’ll compare it to the thousands of notebooks filled from this same bench, on this same day, and see how many faces are the same.A lot, he figures.Maybe that’s why the blessingcurse can’t be broken.





	1000 years ain’t got nothin’ on us babe

Steve blinks awake, and knows immediately time has shifted around him again. That always happens, when one of them- when Bucky- cause it’s always Bucky. No matter how many times he tries, it’s always Bucky. 

He stumbles into the bathroom and scrubs his hands until the water runs red and he doesn’t know which time it’s from. 

He didn’t believe in curses or blessings, that first time around. Now… now he just doesn’t think about it. 

He’s not sure if he’d call this a curse, or hold to it as a blessing. 

But he steps out onto a glistening sidewalk and thanks God that even the 21st century still has newspapers. 

“2018,” he sighs. These are rarely his favorite Bucky’s. But if he gets through this Bucky, he gets back to the Bucky closest to  _ his _ . 

Blessing, curse, gift from God- he’ll do anything for Bucky. 

-

It’s always the same story. 

Bucky doesn’t even have to figure out his own story here, because he already knows where to go. A shitbox little dungeon off Rogers Ave. He hates the street name, hates the exposed walls, the raftors. Hates the giant as fuck glass window staring at old brick trying to be fancy. It’s got a nice stove, and the fridge is usually stocked, but Bucky has to pick out some grey-green meat and a little fruit rot. 

There’s a chocolate bar in the freezer. He breaks it open, pops half into his mouth. 

He taps the calendar. Middle of February, so he figures he’s got two weeks and a day before the ghost finds him. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he just feels it in his gut. Call it a premonition. Maybe a haunting. 

Bucky tugs his hair, braids it into a grease crown.    
He needs a haircut. 

He can’t find his scissors. 

The ghost is out there, searching for him. The ghost hasn’t figured it out yet. It’s always the same story, always the same shitbox. 

Sometimes it’s a different country. Maybe that’s why the ghost gets confused. 

Bucky loves the ghost. Bucky  _ fuckin can’t stand _ the ghost. The ghost gets to remember. Bucky gets weird half-premonitions and fuzzy dreams. He knows to go down to the docks. He knows how to put on the wetsuit, slip on the boots. He picks up a metal box, red-painted and carved with too many memories. 

He finds his pile, removes the scales, the bones, the heads. He finds marbles in some of them. Why, doesn’t matter, but he tucks them carefully into second pocket at his hip. He stabs his finger, it bleeds for half a second. He sticks it into his mouth anyway and it taste like sea-piss and fish. 

The air shifts and Bucky wipes his head south, eyes narrowed. It’s too soon, but he can taste the ghost in the air. 

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe  _ he’s _ the one who's confused. 

The ghost always seems to think so, with his American Blue eyes and his Liberty Red smile, always sad and gentle when he claps a big meat claw on Bucky’s shoulder.  _ You remember me? _

No, no Bucky never remembers him. He’s a ghost that haunts him, haunts the haze-dreams, haunts his fucking daymares. 

-

There’s a blog Steve likes from this decade, Iron&Spider. It makes him a little sad to see it’s gone dormant for a while. 

It’s hard to explain how Steve knows it’s gone dormant. The last post was three days ago, technically. 

But I&S taught him a lot about the blessingcurse. Firstly, it ain’t just him and Buck. Secondly, there ain’t no hard and fast rules. I&S both always remember, always seek each other out. It’s tough for them, because, if Steve reads it right, Iron usually wakes up before Spider is even born. 

It’s not as bad as some of the others he’s read, stories of a pair who never remember each other until they die. Stories of those who just never remember. 

Those are the hardest, Steve thinks, because everyone around them knows. Sometimes they get lucky and in the new life they find each other, fall naturally. Sometimes they never even met. 

Bucky doesn’t remember, not at first. 

Steve thinks,  _ maybe it’s nicer that way.  _ Steve should stop lying to himself. 

-

Bucky twitches. He sniffs the air, and for a moment the world cracks, sky a wash of fire and metal and smoke. 

Screams. 

Taste like copper. 

His jaw aches; must’ve cracked a tooth. 

It’s too early, but he can taste the patriotism in the air. Bucky trembles. The knife slips. Sea-piss and rot into his mouth. 

He doesn’t want to do this again. It hurts, letting the ghost go. It’s better to never try the ghost on. 

The ghost’ll find him. Bucky wakes up when the ghost wakes up. He starts the countdown to when the ghost finds him.

“Buck? You look haunted,” Pieatriv says. 

Bucky grunts.

Piatriv shrugs. “Go home. You bleed all over fish.” He hands Bucky a wad of cash and Bucky shoves it in the pocket in front of the marbles. 

He has two hours before the streets are quiet. So he goes to the market. He picks through the fruits, finds plums a little bruised and buys them at a discount. 

Barely bruises. These people don’t know eating around the wormhole. 

Does Bucky?

Better for Bucky, anyhow, he got a whole basket of plums, and some pears thrown in.

Bucky wanders to the park. Wanders to the ally. Wanders to the shitstained subway. 

Wanders until the night is dark and the cigarettes snuffed out and then he goes home. 

He has two weeks off. He needs to sleep before the ghost brings the pain of remembering. 

-

Steve blinks at the sign. He knows this city, but somehow he can never find the street he needs. Which is insane, given its name. Once, in a saner moment, Bucky had admitted to needing sleep before he woke. 

Steve finds it baffling, because he doesn’t know anytime Bucky ever needed more than a blink and a wink. But he figures he’s not gonna find his street until Bucky has woken up, so he buys a sketchbook and meanders the halls of the Met. 

He doodles, lazy and precise. Not the paintings, not the hall of heroes. He makes portraits of the viewers. 

Later, he’ll compare it to the thousands of notebooks filled from this same bench, on this same day, and see how many faces are the same. 

A lot, he figures. 

Maybe that’s why the blessingcurse can’t be broken. Too many people all stuck in it. 

_ You don’t believe that  _ something wicked whispers in his brains. 

Iron&Spider hasn’t been updated in two rounds about this place. 

Steve reckons it won’t be, ever again. 

He should read the last few entities again. 

-

Bucky wakes, abrupt and angry. He’s shivering, the blankets snatched from him. His knives are gone. 

“Ghost.”

Bucky catalogues autumn gold hair and a broken nose. Bowed lips, smooth jaw. Shoulders that carry trucks, thighs that crush ‘em. He shudders. “You’re early.” 

Ghost grins, too white teeth and pure… purity. “Things are changing, Bucky.”

Too soon. Bucky’s chest aches, and he thinks,  _ Normally I die peacefully before I go back to the war.  _

He looks down, and there’s no gaping hole in his chest, no bloody river pooling in his lap. “Ow,” he says anyway. 

Ghost is down on his knees in an instant, hands scraping over Bucky.

“Ain’t hurt,” Bucky snaps. 

“Your face,” Ghost begins. 

“Memories,” Bucky says. 

Ghost’s Freedom Blue eyes get all misty and hopeful and Bucky wants to bite him. 

“Not those ones. War ones. Shit, dyin’ from a shell to the chest fuckin’ hurts. I ain’t never been to war, but it feels so real it must be a memory. I just don’t know whose.” He rubs his sternum. He’s too skinny. “C’mon punk, buy me a shake.”

Ghost holds his hand out. Bucky slaps it with his robot-arm, just to watch him flinch. 

-

Bucky inhales the shake. Butter pecan, no cherry, extra whip. 

Steve wants to ask, “How often do you eat?” Wants to say, “I saw the plums.” 

Instead he pushed his extra fries across the table, to watch Bucky chew. Mouth open and gross, but at least he’s eating. 

“Early,” Bucky grunts around a mouthful of mash. 

Steve smiles. “It’s a sign.”

Bucky’s eyes go ice-blue, mouth flat and hard. “Stupid fuck. Blog means nothing. Scam.”

Steve sighs.  _ Of course he can remember the blog, but not me. _

Bucky blinks, melting ice, “Blog. Blog.” He’s thinking. His brows furrow, he scratches his beard. Then he looks at Steve again, squinting and present. “You’re early.”

Steve huffs a sigh. “Yeah, sorry.” He pays too much on the tab, and Bucky absently hooks their thumbs as they make it back to Bucky’s… home. 

Steve’s not sure he’d call it a home, except Bucky’s there. 

-

Ghost is handy. He fixes Bucky’s hot water, and his stove, and the clog in the kitchen sink. He cleans the place spotless, lemon and bleach smell. Bucky wants him gone. Clean means-

_ Smokey bar room, jukebox. They’re dancing, laughing. Everyone thinks they’re drunk, takin’ the piss. There’s a disgruntled gal and a sleek emerald dress, rapid fire French spilling from pouty wine lips. They ain’t famous yet, so when Bucky steals a kiss, licks gin from a dry smile, everyone laughs like they’re two fools. They are. They’ll be hung if anyone wises up.  _

“No,” Bucky moans. “Too soon.” He slams both hands to his temples until the sun is bright bright bright, muddy trenches slowly drying. The lazy rise and fall of cricket songs, the groans of men blown to bits. 

Bucky thinks,  _ seventy years between, but I’m stuck caught at two points.  _

He remembers half a conversation, Ghost saying, “I find you every decade, at least for a moment.”

“Ghost is a damn bitch, and a priss to boot,” he says out loud. 

Ghost laughs. “Blankets?”

Bucky waves vaguely, because Ghost is already half down the hall and rummaging through the rags until he finds an Afghan. 

“S’got a star on it,” red border, white border, red border, blue field, silver star. Stitched  _ Sgt. J.B.B. _

Ghost’s eyes are all misty again. He should see someone for that. “Yeah, yeah it does.”

Bucky blinks, smashes his head in his hands, but his skull don’t crack, so he crawls to his mattress and covers himself in his ratty blanket and he falls asleep to a gentle snoring that sounds like jazz. 

-

Steve peels the paneling off the back wall in the closet. He pulls the first book out, leather bound and pages falling out. He opens it, half way through, and finds the sketch. He puts today’s beside it. Then he picks random notebooks. All form the same day, the same year, but entirely different times. He lays them out like a patchwork quilt, and then he studies. Girl, flower dress and headphones, boy probably stealing something, family that Does Not want to be there, young couple, young break up, young divorce, infant. 

He counts the faces; they aren’t always in the same spot, but it’s the same crowd. 

He frowns though. 

The older gentleman with the sunglasses, the teen hanging at his side, the shift looking couple clearly scoping out the vents….

Steve bites his cheeks and shoves the older books back. It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself. It doesn’t mean anything, he lies. 

He’s not sure when he got so good at lying. 

-

Bucky’s head aches. Full, pulsing, starburst pain. He needs to go to the docks, but he can’t remember why. His forefinger bleeds, so he sticks it in his mouth and it tastes like sea-piss and marbles, and a little like menthols. 

His hands tremble with a need he can’t remember, tongue and teeth heavy with a taste he should forget, lungs burning with desires he doesn’t want. 

He cracks a floorboard up, grabs a soggy ziplock bag. There’s a pack of menthols. A lighter carved with a phrase in a language he refuses to remember.  _ Death comes naturally, even to the unnatural. _

Bucky spits at a wall, and Ghost glances up, frowning. Bucky wipes the spit, lights up, ashes into a coffee mug. 

Ashes against his boot. 

Ghost has asthma. Had. Has-had-has- _ doesn’t. _ He relights it, breathes in deeply, and his skin settles.

“Cut your hair?” He half hears. He nods. 

Thick fingers, clumsy but sure, undo his braid, comb through too many weeks of sea-piss and grease. “Maybe I’ll wash it first.” 

So Bucky follows Ghost to the bathroom, leans over the tub. He ashes against the edge while thick fingers scrape his scalp. Too rough.

Not rough enough.  _ Berlin, a mattress that smells like gunpowder and oil paint, tarpe over the hole in the roof. City, too quiet, midday, no life. Bucky’s sweating, thick fingers, clumsy and certain working him open, oil from a kitchen that’s just two walls and a cabinet. “Please, more,” spread legs wider smoke. Smoke? Smoke- _

Bucky jerks, cigarette smouldering against his shirt, Ghost startling and pulling his hair and Bucky  _ groans _ from deep in his gut. 

Ghost is blushing, so Bucky finishes rinsing his hair. 

He wraps a towel around his shoulders and sits cross legged on the edge of the tub. Ghost’s hands shake, so Bucky holds up a new cigarette. 

Ghost doesn’t take it.

He cuts Bucky’s hair too short. Bucky doesn’t know the man staring at him in the reflection of the faucet. He’s almost handsome.  _ Thick fingers mess up his part, Ghost’s face red and sweaty, eyes screwed shut, pleasure breaking the too-still day. _

He vomits on the faucet, vomits on Ghost. 

-

Steve’s worried. Bucky isn’t right. Bucky’s never right in this place, but he’s the wrong kind of not right. “So tell me about yourself,” he says. 

Bucky’s eyes aren’t blue. They’re clear glass, empty prisms. Bucky says, “Ain’t got family.” He says, “My ma died of a broken heart. My Becca died of a broken man.”

He looks confused, angry. He looks distracted.he mutters, “Whose Becca?” Then stares at his lifetime arm like he’s never seen it before. 

He smokes through an entire packet of menthols and then makes Steve walk with him to the corner store. Steve hooks their thumbs together, but Bucky doesn’t even seem to notice. “What do you remember?” 

“Gotta go to work. Need to buy toilet paper. Pricked my finger and it tasted like piss-rot and sea.” 

Steve chews a thumbnail and a small, wicked, buried part of him says,  _ if he dies, it resets. If you leave him, he’ll die. You don’t even have to pull the trigger.  _ He'll do it himself. 

Steve drags Bucky to church, lights a candle and bends on his knees and prays for forgiveness he’s long since stopped deserving.

-

Ghost wants to kiss Bucky. Bucky knows this, because sometimes he wakes up and Ghost has coffee in his hands, and he’s staring too intensely. It wakes Bucky up, makes his skin all tingly and too hot. Makes him hungry, down in his gut. Ghost wipes crumbs and coffee and water from Bucky’s beard, his lip, his cheek. 

Bucky ain’t that bad an eater. 

Ghost wants to kiss him, and Bucky wants Ghost to...

So he kisses Ghost. Ghost makes them go to church, and to the store, and makes Bucky bathe every day. 

Bucky gets out of the shower, not bothering to dry off and walks into the kitchen where Ghost is trying to cook with Bucky’s sketchy fridge contents. He jerks so hard when he sees naked Bucky he slams his face into the fridge door, and he turns so red Bucky thinks the blood is gonna seep through the skin.

Bucky is mean. He kisses Ghost, kisses him hard and desperate, fingers tangling as much as they can in short amber-waves hair, bites against red-rocket lips, licks into a mouth that taste like the front lines and silver medals. He kisses Ghost, hips rocking into him, until Ghost shoves him back, back,  _ back _ , against Bucky’s lumpy mattress.

Bucky doesn’t care for nice shirts and slacks. 

Bucky rips them. 

Ghost knows where Bucky’s lube is.  _ Impressive _ .

Ghost knows how Bucky likes it. Pins one leg down and works two fingers in too quickly, hooks and curls and twist. 

They don’t use a condom.  _ We never do, _ and Bucky doesn’t know who thinks that, but Ghost is big. Too big, he stretches, and holds Bucky down with a hand to his hip, a hand to his thigh. He enters and Bucky bends, arches, and then it’s perfect and too good and  _ heatheatheat _ . 

Bucky’s sobbing. 

The good sobbing, before the smoke clears and the bombs go off and Ghost is crying into his shoulder.

Ghost says, “I’m sorry, I thought-”

Ghost says, “Bucky look at me, please.” 

Ghost says, “Do you remember who I am?” 

“You’re a ghost that should’ve let me die.”

Bucky wakes alone, curled on his side, sore but clean. Very confused. He says, “I want to go home.” The walls ignore him.

-

Steve checks Iron&Spider every day, but there’s nothing, until one day there’s something. A grainy picture, blond guy in a leotard, pretty girl with red-blind hair.  _ You know them _ , he thinks. 

But Steve knew a lot of people before he-

Before the blessing curse. 

The script beneath the picture just says, “Free them.” 

Steve slams his laptop shut and goes to find Bucky. Bucky. Who hasn’t left his curled position in two days. Steve’s tried everything. Physically unbending him, seducing him with menthols and whiskey. Burgers. Dumping water on him. 

Bucky doesn’t so much as blink. 

Steve’s phone beeps and he frowns, because only Bucky should have this number. Technically, this number doesn’t even exists. 

**-fx it.**

Steve ignores it. 

**-fx it, or i’ll hunt you down.**

**-you lose everything.**

**-all these lives will be for nothing.**

**-he’s running out of time.**

Steve slings his phone as hard as he can into the wall and it shatters, metal flying like shrapnel. 

Bucky’s up in a heartbeat, low crouched and knives appearing out of nowhere. His eyes, glass-prism empty, are suddenly midday blue and terrified. Steve holds a hand up, approaches slowly. “Hey, Buck. Hey no, it’s- everything’s fine.” 

Bucky’s looking at him, but Steve has no clue what he’s seeing.

He needs to get out. His computer chimes and he opens it, and the blog has an update. “He’s dying, and you can’t save him here.” 

-

Bucky’s still standing on alert. Ghost broke his phone.  _ Ghost set off the bomb _ . He’s standing, because if he sits his chest will cave in, blood gurgling up his throat, blood leaking from his nose. 

Ghost left his computer open. 

Ghost  _ never _ leaves Bucky alone with his computer. Iron&Spider is up. “Damn blog. Confuses us.” 

Steve thinks it’s real. Bucky hates the dreams it stirs in his head. There’s a grainy photo of two lovers holding each other, but they’re bent all wrong. They look-

Bucky’s seen that statue before. Stone twisted around stone, stuck for all of time in a position that makes his back spasm. 

They look sad, to be so in love. Bucky knows they're in love. No way pretty boy cradles her that way for any other reason.  _ It goes like this. She dies first. A surprise arrow to the spine, the back of the head. He holds her. He holds her and she bleeds all over his costume. She isn’t s’pose to be there. His hand on her belly. He holds her, even when the alarm sounds. Even when the guns go off. Even when the bullets turn him to pasta-strainer. She dies first, but not before she begs. He holds her anyway.  _

  
  


_ They’re out of chances. _

Bucky’s sick all over the floor.

He spends three hours laying in his sick, and then he picks himself up, showers off, and  _ destroys  _ his little shitbox. 

He finds the notebooks. Hundreds of them. All the same, the Met. The trenches. The market. Same people, same fruits. Different weather, different positions. Over and over.

“People think I’m losin’ it.” 

Thing is, Bucky  _ has _ to be losing it. ‘Cause he recognizes the market. Can find himself every time before he’s even looking. His head rings. Rings and rings and rings until he’s searching for a phone he doesn’t own and answering a grainy photo of a dead couple. 

“You gotta get out Barnes. He won’t break it, so you gotta.  _ Remember _ .” 

The kid hangs up and Bucky’s all itchy again. He needs a cigarette. 

There are none. Steve threw ‘em away when Bucky didn’t take ‘em. 

He needs a cigarette. A rifle, needs a bit between his teeth. 

Needs an order,  _ ready to comply? _

He screams. He needs piss-rot and blood between his molars, and blue eyes bringing him down. It’s hot. Too hot, but Bucky is freezing. 

He needs  _ Steve _ . 

He needs answers. 

-

Steve comes back and the place smells like vomit and urine and sweat. Bucky’s eyes are bruised, lays like he’s been near comatose for weeks. But Bucky looks at him like he’s awake. 

“Stevie,” Bucky says desperate and gentle. “Oh. Stevie, what’ve you done?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, no Bucky. It’s too soon.” 

“Why? ‘M I gonna die now?” Bucky demands. 

Steve gapes. 

“Christ you’ve got us trapped in some Garden of Eden fruit tree nightmare,” Bucky gasps. He’s rubbing his sternum but he doesn’t know why. “What’ve you done, Stevie? The goddamned hell did you do?” 

Steve thinks it says more about anything that he doesn’t flinch at Bucky’s language. “I saved you.”

“At what cost?” Bucky nearly chokes on his grief. 

“Doesn’t matter.” Steve says. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t back down. “I saved you. And I’d do it again. A thousand times over.”

“What, you’d burn the world to ash just to watch me rise?” Bucky demands. 

Steve nods. “If that’s what it took.”

The computer chimes and they both flinch like the building shook beneath them, but Steve makes his way to the computer. 

Steve studies the new post. He’s not sure when it appeared or why.

_ -Cap, if you’re reading this  _ ** _-which we know you are_ **

_ -You have to stop. You have to- _

** _-You know what happens. You know what we lose every new life. You’re being selfish. You’re always selfish Cap. _ **

_ -Don’t mind him, he’s scared _

** _-I’m angry, Spider. Cap can fix it, but he’s too selfish, a damn cowardly-_ **

_ -Cap, it wears on the soul, all of this. None of us are protected by the knowledge. Every time we -figure it out, it helps us move forward. But the others- _

_ -Well,  _ ** _you’ve seen your boy._ **

Steve stares at Bucky, and something’s ripped out of him, but he’s not sure what. 

Bucky leaves as Steve watches. 

It’s not until his phone, shattered against the wall chimes like the midnight bells, that he takes off running.

-

Bucky’s dying. Maybe not physically, but that part of him, that secret thing that makes him human, it’s  _ dying _ , and he can’t stop it. 

Does he want to?

He walks to the corner store. Buys too many cigarettes. Too much whiskey. Marbles spill around him but he’s not sure where they come from. 

He walks around, pack after pack ashed into his lungs. Bottle after bottle greasing his belly. 

The knife, it comes out of nowhere.    
Right to his gut, and even his robot arm snapping a neck, head lolling all wrong to the side, can’t fit his guts back in. He sits, back to the brick wall and stares at the dark stain building in his lap. The image blurs. Rain, sun, wind, snow, morning, evening. He’s in a red shirt, blue pants, hightops. Hair braided, beard shaven, dyed himself blond, eyeliner. Tears.

Tears. 

Tears. 

Tears. 

Over and over and over,  _ knife, gut, pool _ . A bench in the park, a bench in front of a painting,  _ white horse dark mane pounding through the snow _ . 

Hands on his face, hands in his hair. Hands pushing his stomach back to his spine. Fish-piss and sea-rot. 

_ Steve. _

-

Steve chases after Bucky. He can’t find him. It was too short this time, and he doesn’t know all of Bucky’s haunts. Doesn’t know where he’ll go.

He smells the copper-sweet smell, that strange super-soldier blood and follows it like a hound. 

Bucky’s eyes are already glassy, skin shiny grey. He’s barely breathing, but that could be because of the tears streaming down his face, more than the sick red drenching his pants. His hands, the ground around him. 

“You have to, Steve. You have to let me go this time,” Bucky sobs. “You have to.”

Steve knows this, he does, but he doesn’t want to. “I’ll fix it. You’ll see.” 

“This isn’t better, Steve. This isn’t better.” Bucky keeps repeating it, words slowing, dark lashes kissing gaunt cheeks. “In’t better, just let Hydra have me. Find me. Love me there. No more, in’t better.” 

Steve holds Bucky, holds him until he’s cold and the stain is sticky and he waits for the world to reset because  _ I’ll do it right this time _ .

+

Bucky’s dancing with a gal who doesn’t speak his language, half drunk and laughing, when his head implodes. He sinks to his knees in his dress uniform, hands against his temples, teeth grinding the pain into his jaw. He can hear the gal screaming and he thinks, “Lady, shut the fuck up,” even as he rocks on his knees, too many images and too many memories and too many  _ hims _ taking up space. He wants to apologize as soon as he’s said it, but damn, his head’s exploding and a small, irrational but desperate part of him is hopin’ he’s been shot or something.

He hasn’t. Been shot, because Steve’s meaty hands are curlin’ round his shoulders and pulling him outout _ out _ .

Steve’s eyes are freedom blue and his lips hometown red, but there’s a kind of sin in his eyes Bucky ain’t never seen before, and it terrifies him. 

“What’ve you done, Stevie?” Bucky whimpers, head still ricocheting. “What’ve you done?”

“Nothing,” Steve says. 

He’s lying. Honor and justice eyes boring into Bucky’s and my country lips tellin’ untruths to Bucky’s ears. 

They both know it, but Steve doesn’t look ready to spill and Bucky’s head is doing ten versions of a waltz and he just wants to lay down. 

He doesn’t ask Steve again, doesn’t push him. But he can smell a river he knows is in France, a river he knows he’s never been too. his ankles are cold in his socks and his teeth chatter. “Take me home,” Bucky says softly.    
For a moment, a terrefying blink of an eye, home is a tower he’s never seen, and a sooty shitbox in Brooklyn, and it's a chair that taste like static and a foxhole in Berlin. He rubs an unlucky marble between his fingers, a stupid toy he took of a kid in the wrong uniform. A boy, too young to be in that helmet, fishy-grey eyes staring at him, saying prays to a piece of spin glass like it’s save him from the knife in his back. 

Unlucky marble, premonition feeling, Bucky can’t let it go. 

_ Christ _ , but Bucky’s seen the metal vets. The ones on the corner, rockin’ in the snow, blood in their eyes no one else can see but them. “Don’t let me be them,” he tells Steve, who just nods and pulls him along. “Don’t. Don’t you dare let me be them.”

“Gotta quit drinkin’ so much,” Steve tries to joke. 

-

“Forgive me Father, for I am sin,” Bucky whispers into Steve’s hair too quiet for liberty to listen. Call it tremors, call it a nightmare, Bucky don’t care. He lets Steve hold him, listens to him recite his Psalms, and he shuts his eyes so tight he thinks they might stick. Prays they won’t open again. He dreams.  _ The area smells like sweet smoke and flowers and everyone is ranting about peace like they aren’t shippin’ boys off to die. Bucky’s not dyin’ and he ain’t singing about peace neither. He settles the butt of his weapon against his shoulder, lines up the shot. Shame, she’s pretty. Fire. Funny, she’s just as pretty with brains splattered against her rosey traiter cheeks. He blinks, and he know’s its the 90’s but he don’t know how and he’s got his gun pointed at a couple that feels like friends and his dreams keep singing “Do you comply?” _

Bucky wakes up, sweaty and frightened, biting his nightmare into Steve’s shoulder and it feels wrong for reasons he can’t explain. Reasons he thinks his gut knows, but he doesn’t want to discover. He rubs his marble against his palm until it falls, until it shatters against the floor, lost in the muck. It feels like something. 

Bucky heard a thing once, about how animals could feel storms, and how bad they were gonna be. Lotta pretty guys and gals have called Bucky a dog before, and maybe they saw the storm he felt in his chest. He’s always liked storms, liked the respite from workin’ and fightin’, but something tells him this ain’t the right kinda storm. 

Steve wakes up, sees the panic in Bucky’s eyes and he holds him gentle, whispers to him. Bucky doesn’t know what he says but they must be alone because Steve fits a hand down the front of Bucky’s pants and Bucky doesn’t have the decency to keep himself quiet. He rocks into that hand, thick, smooth, strangely uncalloused. Rocks until he sobbing, spend costing the inside of his pants and the palm of Steve’s hands. 

-

“Forgive me Father, for I am sin,” Bucky whispers long after the others have fallen asleep, once Steve’s in his own bed and Bucky’s washed himself as clean as he can; it’s true. He saw the marriage certificate, with its carefully smeared year. Ain’t no reason to move away from everyone you know, to smear that tiny number, except you had a kid born too soon. Bucky was born in sin, washed in his mother’s blood and his sister’s tears and his father’s fury.

“Forgive me, for what I sins am to commit,” because despite everything the Church said, Bucky remembers the story of the girl who saw the future. Remembers Jesus kickin’ demons out of her. He doesn’t remember it all. 

He does remember Becca leaning in to say “That wasn’t about her telling the future, though, that was about greedy men using it for money. That’s why we keep it to ourselves, these funny feelin’s.” 

Bucky thinks she might’ve lied, but somehow she made lies turn true. 

Becca’s feelings were always a little more accurate. “Careful around that Steve, Bucky. He’ll drag you down and you’ll  _ beg for it. _ ” Nothing cruel in her voice, just sympathy.

“Careful ‘bout that Jake, Becca, you won't outlast him.” God, but he’d wanted to be wrong. Begged and screamed and bled his knees to be wrong. 

“S’okay Jamie. You’re meant to be the hero of this family. They’ll turn you to legend, ink you into their skin.”

Bucky still thinks it should’ve been Becca. In another time, another life it would’ve been. 

Now though, Bucky’s got a demon but no one's turn in’ a profit except for maybe Steve, and he’d dare Christ to try and take it from him, this thing that makes Steve risk everything to hold him gentle and precious. 

Bucky bleeds his knees, prayin’, and when the others wake up they don’t say a goddamned thing ‘cause no one wants to poke the hound foaming at the mouth. 

-

They keep marching. The rain has been pounding down their backs for weeks and they keep marching.

Bucky would fuckin’ hate it, except no one blinks an eye when Steve huddles in too close. They bow their heads together, breathing each other’s air, taste each other’s rank, and no one bats an eye ‘cause it’s fuckin’ cold and wet and everyone’s just trying to stay warm. So who gives two shits if he’s teasing a hand over Steve’s smooth belly. 

“Language,” Steve says quietly. His voice is all bratty, pitchy, breathless, and Bucky smiles against his throat. 

“Ain’t even sayin’ nothing, Rogers,” Bucky huffs. He licks at rain that taste like sugar and flesh. 

Steve’s whole body shivers and he catches Bucky’s hand on its southbound travels. “I can hear you thinking it, Barnes.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks. “And what am I thinking?”

Steve guides their hands  _ down _ and goddamn but that serum is a blessing. Steve groans, and it might be the cold or it might be the fingers curling around his balls, stroking down his shaft. 

_ Metal fingers, a quilt with rockets, the national anthem, a thousand tombs- _

“Bucky?” Steve’s screaming in his ear and Bucky snatches his hand to his chest, crawls backward through the mud. Steve’s not hard anymore, just terrified. 

So is Bucky. “You okay, Buck?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Somethin’s wrong with me, Steve. Something real bad.” 

Steve holds him and Bucky cries. Cries like he didn’t for Becca, his mama, for all the boys his side and across the lineshe’s watched bleed out in the mud. A boy holding a goddamned marble he’d probably earned that summer. He cries so loud he thinks the thunder quiets in respect and awe. 

-

They march, and Bucky goes mad, and Steve’s thumb nail bleeds as quickly as it heels. 

Everyone sees it. Bucky can hear the whispers, see the side stepping. He’s goin’ mad. Losin’ the sanity he never had. 

He wakes up screaming. Too many faces dead in his dreams, too many fish eyes staring at him.

Everything taste like sea-piss and rot and ain’t that the damndest thing. 

“Steve? We ever been to the sea?” Bucky asks. They’re sitting in the mud, shivering. Bucky can taste the snow in the air. 

Steve gives him a look. That look that says he’s gonna lie ‘cause he thinks it’s good for Bucky.

Bucky can’t handle that, so he leans into Steve, tucks his face into his neck. He can almost smell the spicy after shave. 

He almost smells something like woods and citrus.

_ They ran away, ran all the way to the edge of the world and they hid because they thought they were safe. The ship came out of nowhere. Time had to right itself.  _

_ Blood in his lap, but it’s not Bucky’s it’s Steve’s. He’s screaming. Begging. He freezes to death, cradling Steve.  _

_ He freezes. He freezes. He freezes.  _

_ He complies. Steve never dies. Steve can’t.  _

Bucky’s screaming, but Steve has a hand over his mouth and he’s choking on his fear and Steve’s saying “Hush, you’ll get us killed.”

Everyone’s angry. Bucky doesn’t blame them. 

-

If hindsight is 20/20, Bucky fuckin’ wishes he prostituted out his damn premonitions. At least he’d die filthy fucking rich. 

He didn’t know he knew, but somehow, some festering, poisoned part of him always knew he’d end up here. 

When did he start staring up at Steve’s face? Why hasn’t he worshiped that jaw? Bit his mark until even that damn superserum couldn’t heal it? God Steve is beautiful. Damn beautiful. Shit, Bucky’s hanging by a finger and lusting after Steve, and he wonders why his soul is full of nothing but shitstains and fungus. Fuck, but he wants a goddamned menthol. 

They haven’t tasted right since that damn dance with the French broad. 

“C’mon Stevie, you gotta let me go,” Bucky says gently. And hell if that doesn’t taste familiar in his mouth, smooth against his tongue like the cigarettes aren’t anymore. Funny, ‘cause Steve’s the one pale faced and haunted. Shit, Steve knows. Double shit, Bucky can feel the knowledge dawning on his own face.

Bucky slips from his grasp and he hears Steve scream until nothing makes any sound anymore. 

-

Winter that never ends.

Pain. Leather bit between his teeth. Thicker, harder.

Cracked teeth.

No shoes.

Lacerations and new beginnings. 

Summer flower, brains on a rosy cheek.

Stone lovers, horse racing through the snow. 

Scope, friendly face in sight.

Blonde, red. 

The girls who dance.

Swollen belly and bullets scream and she begged him to go. 

He loved her. 

He loves him. 

Too many voices; all his and impossible.

Steve, a millions Steves, all his, all wrong, all  _ right _ .

Comply, and forget.

Comply, please don’t remember.

Comply?

Compliance is reward.

-

Steve can smell the menthol as soon as he walks through the door, and he knows Bucky’s going to be in there, tapping away on his laptop, shower running and menthol smouldering over the toilet. “You’re not hiding it, Buck!” He shouts through the loft.

He doesn’t get an answer, and it makes him frown. He’d done everything right this time, rescued Bucky proper. The accords, fucking Tony Stark running point. 

They weren’t criminals, weren’t on the run. 

But Bucky…

Steve wanders in, and he expects Bucky to be there, brows furrowed and eyes glass-shattered prisms instead of holy blue. Fingers stroking a marble, the one tic Steve’s never understood. 

Bucky is in there, and the cigarette does smoulder over the toilet. But there’s a thousand charcoal sketches strewn before him, some damp from the shower spray, some soaked through with tears. 

“How many?” Bucky demands.  _ How many cycles? _

“4,198,” Steve says without remorse. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky cusses. Steve doesn’t even chide him. 

“Wouldn’t you’ve?” Steve demands. “Wouldn’t you’ve broken the world if it’d been me?” 

Bucky thinks about it, thinks long and hard and until the smoke in his mouth is nothing but wet ash. “I dunno, Steve. I love you, but I thought I knew you enough to know you wouldn’t want a life of half-memories and redos.” He stares at the old, dirty, bloody boots on his feets. They feel constant. Like he’s worn them in every version of himself. “I thought you were the kinda guy to fix the world. The kinda guy a pal like me aspires to be. ‘Cause you’re good. And I’m not. Thing is, Steve, if the good in the world goes bad, the bad ain’t gonna suddenly get good.” He leaves the bathroom, and Steve… Steve does what he does. He chases him.

-

Steve finds Bucky in the park, and Bucky thinks,  _ yeah, that’s how it goes. _

They need to talk about it, this thing. They need to talk about all the voices, all the lifetimes crowding in Bucky’s head. Which version of Bucky loves which Steve. Is this the only Bucky with hate clawing up his throat?

He remembers a question from free falling into an endless winter. “How’d you do it?”

And Steve, perfect fucking Steve with his Washington blue eyes and Revolution red lips and his Christ washed pale skin looks like he might be ill. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, how the hell did you do it?”

Steve holds something out. A blue box, vial of green particles. “Little bit of this, little bit of that. Call it a blessing, call it a curse. I had to save you. I’d do it again too, Buck. I won’t apologize.”

Neither of them says a damn thing after that, because at the end of the day, Bucky was right. Bad just gets badder.

Bucky lets Steve hold him, inhales the woodsy citrus scent and pretends its spicy aftershave.

He picks up his rifle, stares through the sight at nothing, right over Steve’s shoulder, fingers the silencer the way he once fingered Steve, all reverent and hopeful. “Bad just gets badder, meaner, nastier, until ain’t nothing glitzy left.” He lowers it back to his hip.

“What are you sayin’, Buck?” Steve asks. He reaches up between, puts a hand to Bucky’s cheek, fingers warm against the curls. Bucky almost wants him to kiss him, because then maybe this is the real thing, the only lifetime. Maybe then Becca was wrong and selling out doesn’t mean Christ runs you through. He makes his choice. 

Bucky steps back. “Hell if I know, Steve. Hell if I know.”

He thinks back to that prayer, _ Father forgive me, for I am sin.  _ He was sin then. _ He’s sin now.  _ And sinners don’t quit, not really. _ So lean forward, kiss Steve. Take what you’ve been begging for, 1000 years lived in a day.  _ Kiss him hungry and desperate and taste that fuckin’ righteousness that used to make his boy glow.

_ Kiss him until they taste like blood and lead and absolution and freedom. _

_ Kiss him until they’re two cold bodies lyin’ in a park, could be sleepin’ lovers. Two sinners gone still, gone silent, the world a little glitzy once more.  _


End file.
